Angel Smile
by StopandSmellthePotatoes
Summary: Long before Katniss Everdeen, District 12 had another victor, a girl with an angel smile and blood on her hands.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! I don't own Hunger Games. I just like to explore Suzanne Collins's world because it's wonderful. I already completed this story, so updates will be frequent. Really. Really frequent. Enjoy! Review if you want!**

Chapter One

Long before Haymitch's gruesome victory, even longer before Katniss's glorious triumph over the Games and the Capitol, District 12 had another victor, in the 12th Hunger Games. "12 for 12" they called her during the Games. The Gamemakers knew she would win as they watched her watching the other tributes. Her eyes were cold, they said, so calculating, even as they followed the youngest, a tiny thirteen year old, around the training room. They would say, after the Games, that they knew she would win in that very moment. And maybe they said that every year, maybe they said it to save their own skins, but it was certainly true for her.

She was District 12's first victor, their first tribute that didn't die within the first twenty hours of the Games, but they never talked about her. But there were those little whispers, you could piece together her story. Lilac Menera was fifteen years old, with glistening white hair and an angel's smile. She charmed them. The first time she sat on Caeser Flickerman's predecessor, Jobanga Ler's couch, they all fell in love but they were so certain that she would die. They let her sparkle under the lights for the last time as she walked off the stage, and even in District 12, they all bowed their heads as her mother wept. The last time she sat on Jobanga Ler's couch, he didn't look her in the eye. They say that he was afraid of what he would see, and he would hardly deny that rumor. He was not the only one that said her eyes held death.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Even back then, the wealthy Districts, One and Two, had 'Career' tributes. They trained and trained, sacrificing everything to be the pride of their District. And they always won. They had trained, they could survive. When they looked at tiny Lilac Menera, they laughed and asked each other which one of them would get to kill her.

Thousands of bets were placed on District One's girl, Aurora, and District One's boy, Shale. Even more were placed on District Two's spear-throwing girl, Crane, and seven foot tall boy, Coreth.

But it was Lilac and not Aurora, Shale, Crane, or Coreth, that ate and slept peacefully that first night in the white-walled maze arena.

* * *

"Aren't you going to help me win?" Lilac asked, her voice shaking as her stylist combed her shining hair.

"That's not my job. I make you pretty. Your mentor helps you win."

"I don't have a mentor, Trean. You know that, I'm District 12."

"And don't I know it," she said, disgruntled. "Next year they better give me another district, you're no fun."

"Because we won't win?"

Trean didn't say anything. Her silence was damning.

"Don't worry. We both know. We both know we're never going home." Lilac's light voice betrayed nothing. She had gone from shaking in fear to completely withdrawn, her eyes dead as she watched her stylist spread her hair across her shoulders, over her long sleeved black shirt, the same one that every tribute would wear in the arena.

"Goodbye, Trean," Lilac said as the countdown began and she stepped onto the platform that would leave her in the arena. "I'm sorry you got such a boring district this year."

And then there was white. White everywhere. As she blinked, as the clock ticked down, she thought quickly. There would be a supply area close by, for the first bloodbath, for the first few bets to be won. She could either run to it and try, or she could run away and live a little longer. As the light began to make sense, she realized that she stood in some kind of overlarge hospital, with white concrete wall and no roof. Her eyes scanned her opponents, smirking, shivering, crying, and then zeroed in on the supplies.

The countdown ended, she was off the platform. Towards the supplies in a hurried blur, with twenty other tributes. The boy she came here with had disappeared behind a wall, to hide. To die.

She ran, someone tried to stop her, yelling like a madman.

A cannon boomed, shattering the air. Someone had already died, but Lilac didn't bother to care. Her hands closed around a backpack and a knife and she turned and started to run.

A hand closed on her arm, stopping her.

"Give me that you scrawny bi-" District 4's boy couldn't finish his sentence, not with a blade through his throat. So much blood, but what if it didn't kill him? She stabbed him again, this time in the heart. Footsteps behind her now, but they were quickly forever stopped, and she grabbed their backpack as they fell.

Now they were all gone. Scattered or dead. Lilac stepped over the nine bodies, looking down and realizing that the first kill was hers, by her own hand. That first cannon was hers.

Lilac felt no need to move fast. She had weapons, they had seen what she could do. She stopped and looked around at the building. The room that had been so blindingly white not more than five minutes ago was tinged pink, the blood ran into a drain in the ground, flooding the caved-in floor. This was one hell of a hospital. For once, more people would die in a Capitol hospital than District 12's ramshackle, sad excuse for one.

Someone was trying to sneak up behind her, but their footsteps echoed off the cold walls.

Aurora's fingers twitched, aching to get her first kill. Aching to sink the knife into that 12's neck, aching to watch that long white hair turn red like the room they stood in.

That thought, that glorious vision, was the last thing in her mind, and there was a smile on her face as her head hit the floor.

"Is this the best District 1 can produce?" Lilac's voice echoed and echoed, making a mockery of a thousand bets. She smirked at the ceiling, knowing, just knowing that their cameras were following her every move. This blood thirsty, sick little girl would transfix the Gamemakers.

"Because look." She said. She knelt over her first kill and lifted his head so that they could see. "Here's their other tribute. I killed them both before they could get one kill in."

Lilac spread her lips in that charming angel smile and winked. And the silver parachutes rained from the sky.

Maybe the sponsors were just hoping they could keep her still so that she didn't kill District 2's tributes and singlehandedly cause several thousands bets to be lost, or maybe they honestly loved her. The audience, dead silent as she taunted them all, went wild when she winked.

In District 12, there was utter silence, not the silence of eager anticipation, but the kind of silence found at a funeral. The Capitol had taken their angel and made a beautiful monster.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi! Hope you all enjoy the third chapter! **

**I don't own Hunger Games or Panem or any of that jazz. If I did, a lot more people would have died in the book. Which is saying something.**

Chapter 3

The lights of the hospital never go out.

Lilac can't sleep, hasn't slept in 26 hours. She knew this, she felt this in her bones as she stumbled down another hallway in this nightmare of a maze. Hospitals, designed to provide comfort and health, driving her to the brink of madness. Her hand shook as it fell against a wall, steadying her aching legs. Her pace was uneven, a limping, drunken run, and she thought she felt tears running down her cheeks. The cold stone hallways went from smooth and terrifyingly bright, to white and black. Black squares lined the hall, and Lilac slowly realized that those squares were doors. _Doors_.

What was behind those doors? Salvation or execution, she supposed, so she took a drink of water to clear her head. But her hand still shook, she felt unfocused. If anything was behind those doors, and if she still felt like she did when she opened them, she knew she would be dead in an instant.

"Focus." She whispered to herself. "I need to focus."

The audience might not have understood why she did what she did that night (because it was night, late at night), but she did. She understood her base need to stay alive better than any Capitol citizen ever could, and she knew, her body knew, what to do. When she let a little of her own blood spill from her beloved Capitol knife to the clean white floor, she felt alive. She could take on anything, and she did. Lilac slammed the first door opened, only to see a ransacked room and a dead body. That was 13 dead, she realized. More than halfway there.

She went into the next room, and when she came out, she left three mother's hearts shattered on the grounds of their districts. It was in that room, when the cameras followed her through the door, fixed on her face as she took in the youngest tributes, two thirteen year old from the 5th and 6th districts and one girl from 11, that the Gamemakers, the Capitol, and all of the districts realized exactly what they were dealing with.

Katniss Everdeen, the storyteller will now interlude, would not have done what Lilac Menera did. Katniss Everdeen would have closed the door and walked away. To you, now, in this peaceful present, even that might seem harsh. To leave three children in a room, defenseless and trying to survive, is cruel. To walk in, see that two thirteen year olds are desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood from a fourteen year old's stump of a leg, and walk back out is condemnable. But Katniss Everdeen would have give them a chance.

Lilac Menera took one look at them and smiled with her dead eyes. "Hello." She whispered to them and they jumped. They hadn't heard her come in, but now, with that knife glinting in the unnatural light, they saw her.

"Please. Please don't, please we're begging you!" The littlest one screamed for help. Help from whom or what she didn't know.

"Begging does no good in the Capitol. Stop crying. Show your district some respect. That's what we're here for isn't it? To _honor_ our districts?"

The brutality of the three children's deaths made it easy for the Capitol to ban the viewing of the 12th Hunger Games to any district in the future. She made it easy for them to hate her, easy to censor the anti-Capitol words she spat and she let them bleed dry at her hand.

But even the quickest Gamemaker couldn't cut away fast enough when the children's bodies were lifted up and their bloody shirts ripped apart to show the glaringly red '13' carved on their stomachs.

Not even the instant blackout in the arena could stop it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi, lovelies! Another chapter for you. :) **

**Surprise. ****I don't own Hunger Games. I wish I did though. Darn. **

**Enjoy! Review! Reviews make me a happy camper.**

Chapter 4

She could try and blame it on sleep deprivation, she thought as she sank to the floor in the next room. She really could, and they might even believe her. They still liked her, assuming that the parachutes around her were a good judge of the sponsor's enrapturement of her sick games.

But she wouldn't betray herself like that. It wasn't that long ago. They still remembered when 13 existed, they remembered the smoke from the ashes when it was destroyed. And in 12, they still remember that ghastly scent that permeated the air for nearly a week, the scent of burnt, destroyed carcasses. She would punish them for what they had done to those people. What was a dozen or so deaths when compared to an entire district? They would damn her actions in the arena but they would turn a blind eye on the destruction of hundreds of lives, and entire land laid waste. Turn a blind eye, or spin the whole situation to be only right, only the natural order of things, only what was necessary for the survival of Panem. And of course that was a lie, but the Capitol wanted to forget it. What had been done to 13 was not beautiful. And the Capitol demanded beauty from its subjects.

And so one by one, she killed them.

They showed so much fear right as she killed them, they screamed so much as she hurt them.

"Honor your district." She would tell them. "That's why we're here. To pay. To honor. So do it, don't shame them."

"Please." They would say. "No." They would beg.

"It's just good television."

And then they would be gone, a bloody mess for the Capitol to clean up.

The next one Lilac killed fought her, long and hard. Grabbed her head when she snuck up behind him and slammed her into the wall. He fell, they scrabbled for weapons, kicking, biting, clawing, screaming.

And she praised his bravery as she killed him. She praised his district as she carved her number into his chest.

Lilac turned and looked at the room, at the mess they had left.

"So much blood in this clean white space." She smiled to herself and she dragged her finger through the river of blood pooling around the lowest point of the room, where his body lay over the drain, blocking it.

And as the cannon boomed and they lifted his body into the air, the cameras caught her handiwork and the smile on her face. An angel smile indeed. An avenging angel, and angel of death.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hi! So, this is the second-to-last chapter of this story. Yay! Short and not-so-sweet I guess haha. Thanks for reading! Review if you have input/nice things to say/mean things to say. **

**I still don't own Hunger Games. **

Chapter 5

Only four remained, the rest a blur of blood and numbers.

A cannon boomed, and in the sky, the girl from 3 was dead.

To be a good sport, to be good television, Lilac smirked. "You can't get them all, I suppose." And then she slept.

She woke up in a different white room, with the three remaining opponents. They were all still asleep. The girl and boy from two, the boy from 12, her district. Little Marek, the seamstress's only son.

Lilac's hand was cramping, clasped in a death grip around her knife. She could end it. Right now, right then. But that would be no fun. Scuffling with half-awake soon-dead tributes was not good television.

So Lilac stood up and looked around the room. It was round and completely sealed off. No escape, the final bloodbath, after only five days. The Capitol must have been sick of being mocked.

"She must not win. Kill her. Those three will kill her, and then each other, but she _must_ _not win_." The Gamemakers were told, and they were prepared to do what they must.

But they still were not prepared for _her_.

Her mind might have been all wrong, she might have been tired, but she did not act like they thought she would. She let the tributes wake up. She let them see her standing there with her knife, her legs stained with blood, her black jacket shining with still more blood, her hair streaked red. She let them see her smile, and she let them scream.

And when they ran for her, she let them die. District 2's Crane and Coreth put up some fight, but they were still so sluggish. Crane fell in pieces, and Coreth crashed to the ground, his sheer size shaking the little white arena that sat directly in the middle of the big white arena.

And then it was just her and District 12.

And then the Gamemakers knew they had lost.

Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the star-crossed lovers could not bring themselves to allow one to die so that the other could live. A rule was changed, and they both could live. But Marek and Lilac were not star-crossed lovers, they'd never even spoken to each other. Lilac should have hesitated, should have shown some sort of regret for turning so quickly against her own district. She should not have smiled so kindly at him and waved him to her side, letting her knife glint.

He came to her, stiffly, shaking, crying. He watched the fresh blood spill from the new corpses as she finished her message. He kept his eyes locked on hers in fear.

"Marek." Her voice was soft, but it echoed, echoed all the way to District 12, to where Marek's mother muffled her screams into her sewing and her friends cried with her. "Marek, say goodbye to you mother, now."

"What?" The first thing he ever said to her.

"Say goodbye. I'm giving you the chance to say goodbye."

Marek looked at her. "Goodbye, mother." He whispered.

"No. To the sky. They're in the sky, so say it to the sky."

"Goodbye, mother." His voice was loud, was strong. But despite his strength in his last moments, they were still his last moments, and he fell, and he bled for District 13 like all the others.

A cannon.

"I win," Lilac announced humorlessly. "I win the 12th Hunger Games." And as she spoke, she pulled the zipper of her jacket down to reveal the bandages she had wrapped around her chest after her fight with the brave boy. Down, then down to the floor.

As her chest heaved in exhaustion, blood trickled out, dripping from the jagged lines, mixing with sweat, smearing, emboldening her bloody message.

"I win."

_13._


	6. Chapter 6

**Hello! Last chapter. Woot. Thanks for sticking with this story! :) Hope you enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own Hunger Games. Still.**

Chapter 6

The Gamemakers could not find a reason to not let her win. They couldn't defeat her during the Games, so they couldn't deny her the right she had to win.

On Jobanga Ler's show, the show that led up to her crowning as victor for that is how they once did it, he leaned away from her and she sat stiffly from the pain, but she smiled her angel smile and she mocked them with her eyes. She was beautiful again, the Capitol stylists painting over her wickedness with their faux beauty. But not quite perfect, if they couldn't beat her in the Games, they could beat her now. Like the bloody white hospital arena, her eyes were illuminated red against her china doll face. A scarlet ribbon was laced through her pure white hair, and as she sat down on the cool blue couch of the icy interview set, she stood out like a murderous white light, she did not fit at all unlike the last eleven victors. Lilac Menera was not welcome there.

"So. Lilac Menera, winner of the 12th Hunger Games. How do you feel?" Jobanga Ler leaned in conspiratorially, crinkling his navy blue suit.

"I feel like I just killed more people than anyone in the Capitol would ever dream of killing." She blinked her red lashes sweetly, spreading her pale lips into her smile.

"And your district is very proud of you for winning. They must be thrilled that they finally have a mentor for the following years."

Lilac did not answer. She stood up in her ivory dress, off-white, tainted purity and she slid the pin out of her all white hair and let it cascade.

"They must have a winner. They must crown a winner." Her voice rang like bells, far too clear and doll-like for the girl that had just slaughtered and shamed the districts.

"Lilac, what are you-"

"I don't really know what the hell I was trying to prove in that nightmare that you call a game. I just thought that if I die, I might as well die and make a mess for the Capitol when I go. But I lived. I'm good at killing. So I won, which might be more of a mess for the Capitol. But I'm still standing here, so maybe no one cares about District 13. Maybe the Capitol doesn't even think that it matters that they slaughtered every citizen of a district. Maybe nothing I did in there means anything to anyone in the Capitol. Except the Games. The Games matter to them. And they must have a victor."

So she slashed her wrists and watched the blood turn the hem of her dress her new favorite color, splashing up, flowering her dress, like red rose petals. And she died as they all watched in silence, stunned and unsure of what to do. But in District 12, finally, finally she had their respect, and they held their three fingers in salute as she collapsed. The uncrowned avenging angel victor of District 12 died with a smile on her lips, and the world watched.

Katniss Everdeen was not the first tribute to make a mockery of the Games. She was the only one to succeed, but her story is not alone.


End file.
